Meh…
Review by Jason Guest
Release date: 22 January 2016
The Resistance, the Swedish extreme metal band featuring former and current members of In Flames and The Haunted, have just released their second album, Coup de Grace. And it’s got balls. Reconnecting “with the one and only, original extreme hardcore and slams it straight down your throat and into the present age,” The Resistance are a clenched fist of death metal might and the album heavier than a very heavy thing indeed. Well, that’s the theory…
Opening with the sounds of war, the twisted sounds of ‘Death March’ are almost ominous and, frankly, doesn’t bode well. ‘I Welcome Death’ kicks straight in with massive riffs and angry shouting and more massive shouting and more angry riffs and begins to take hold and pretty much sets the template for the rest of the album. ‘Smallest Creep’ is all hardcore punk simplicity with more angry shouting about something that’s probably very important but quickly loses its fire. ‘Violator’ is the same, dull repetition of harsh riffs and finger-pointing accusations to do with war or something, but this already beginning to wear thin.
‘Felony’ slows it down for a bit of variation, and ‘Deathblow’ goes for the chunky grooves, and, well, the rest of it is pretty much more of the same. I’ve listened to this album from start to finish a bunch of times, all thirty six minutes of it, and while the production is top notch and the playing is tight, there’s very little here to get your teeth into. Yeah, it all sounds huge and angry and meaningful and menacing, but the substance quickly diminishes and all that’s left is style. Unoriginal and unimpressive.
4 out of 10
Track listing:
- Death March
- I Welcome Death
- Smallest Creep
- Violator
- Felony
- Death Blow
- Resolution
- World Order
- Enslavement
- Art Of Murder
- For The Venom
- The Drowning
- As It All Came Down
